Tiffany Collyer (16607038)

We were exploring lighting in more detail, especially in the use of portrait photography. High key lighting produced the better images for me. I could see everything and all of it was presentable to the viewer. The low-key lighting provided more of an atmosphere to the images. Here are a few examples:

I’m not the photographer of this image, although I like and I appreciate the setup. The light coming from behind me illuminates my hair and takes me out a little from the dark background, while the light from the right side of me defines half of my face, making me actually visible to the camera.

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For the higher key lighting, we lit up the background separately from the subject. Two lights on the background, and one light in front, to the right, of the model. This allowed for the background to be either dark-ish or light, depending on what we want, and for the subject to be the same. You might use this kind of photography for passport photos, or to take subjects away from their natural environments. I like the idea of people being photographed away from their home lives and their normal environments; it allows the viewer to come up with their own interpretations and visions of who these people are, without anymore hints than what they give away in the frame through their clothing and their expressions.

Our task was to go to a specific location. However, I found that when I get out with a camera, I take photos of anything interesting that I see. By the end of the walk, I ended up simply taking photos for reference at the actual location, just in case I was able to get back around to it at a later date. So I could plan my shots there, and hopefully photograph while there was no one else there.

In any case, these are some of the images that I managed to get on the way to the location.

As an extra, this is one I managed to achieve while alone in my room. I closed the curtains, and shot a battery-powered candle through a class bottle. I played with the depth of field here, so that the background is all out of focus. I like this image, but it doesn’t really do much for the viewer.

Weeks 3 and 4, from what I recall, were about found objects. We were experimenting how to use a backdrop, and how colour can contrast in the frame, along with composition, more hands-on time with the cameras, and just a bit of fun. Here are a few examples from week 3:

In week 4, we did a similar thing. However this time, we were focusing on lighting and how it effects the image. Everything from where the light is coming from, to where it’s cast, has an overall effect on the photo and how it comes out as a whole. These are a few images that I’ve selected from it. They’re not special, but it shows an experimentation with what we’re doing. The depth of field with the glasses on the first image, and the different kind of shadows we could create on the second and third.